Breakdance Exercises

Breakdancing is as much about gymnastics and acrobatics as it is about dancing. Moves like the helicopter, the worm, cartwheels, sixsteps and headspins require strength, flexibility, coordination and skill. The best way to become proficient at breakdancing is to practice, but you can improve your performance of these and other moves by developing strength and flexibility throughout your body.

  1. Core Exercises

    • Core is the collective term for your abs, waist and lower back. Individually, these muscles control the movements of your back and collectively they support your spine and provide stability. From flares to the worm, your core plays a vital part in most breakdancing moves. Strengthen your core with planks, side planks, cable Russian twists, hanging leg raises, back extensions and bird-dogs. As your core is involved in almost every breakdance move, make sure you do your core training on a separate day to your dance practice to avoid overtraining these muscles.

    Upper Body Exercises

    • Breakdance moves often involve balancing on your hands or even one hand at a time. This requires lots of strength. There are also some advanced moves where dancers perform jumps on their hands only. Pushing exercises such as bench presses, overhead presses, pull ups, pushups, plyo pushups, planche variations and dips target your chest, shoulder and triceps muscles, and will increase your strength for these demanding moves. Increasing strength around your shoulder joints will also help increase glenohumeral stability which may reduce your chances of suffering a shoulder injury.

    Lower Body Exercises

    • Like a gymnast, breakdancers need strong, explosive leg muscles for jumping into flips and other aerial moves. On the other hand, excessively muscular legs would make any hand-balancing moves much more difficult. The solution to this conundrum is to perform plyometrics or jumping exercises. Squat jumps, box jumps, hurdle jumps, lateral hops and jumping lunges will increase your leg strength and power without triggering lots of hypertrophy or muscle growth. As plyometrics involve a lot of impact, start slowly, increase your training volume gradually and perform these exercises after an appropriate warm up, as well as on a forgiving surface such as gymnastic mats, grass or a sprung floor.

    Flexibility Exercises

    • Being flexible for breakdancing offers a number of benefits: your moves will be more fluid, your range of movement will be greater so your moves will look more impressive and your flexible muscles will be less prone to injury. Work on your flexibility after breakdance practice, after strength and conditioning workouts and anytime your muscles are warm enough to stretch effectively and safely. While all of your muscles need to be flexible, for moves like flares, windmills and sixsteps, you need good hip, hamstring and lower back flexibility, so spend extra time on these areas. The seated hamstring stretch, butterfly stretch and upward-facing dog from yoga are effective stretches for these areas.